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Volume II · Page 72
examine fundamental questions of medical ethics in these proceedings. Law and ethics are measured by different standards which sometimes contradict each other. The same applies to the principles of general ethics as well as to those of a particular profession. A deed offending the recognized principles of medical ethics does not necessarily constitute a crime. Only the cogent precepts of the law can be used as the basis for a verdict, and not the unwritten regulations and convictions existing inside a profession.
However, it cannot be concluded from this that the principles of medical ethics and their practical application were of no importance at all in these proceedings. These principles cannot, of course, be applied directly. At the same time there is no doubt that the principles of medical ethics and above all their practical application in recent decades can play an indirect part insofar as they have to be taken into consideration when interpreting the law. However, evidence has now proved that in recent decades and even earlier, numerous experiments were carried out on human beings, and, moreover, on persons who did not volunteer for such purpose. In this respect I refer to the statements of the expert Professor Dr. Leibbrandt, witness for the prosecution. I furthermore refer to the extensive evidence submitted by the prosecution on this question from which it appears that in numerous cases experiments were carried out on human beings, of the nature and degree of danger of which they could not have been aware and to which they would never have agreed voluntarily. The only conclusion which can be drawn from these facts is that during recent decades views on this question have changed in the same way as the relations between the individual and the community in general have changed. In this connection I need not give the detailed reasons which led to this development. It is a fact that, at least in Europe, the state and the community have taken a different attitude toward the individual. However differently one may write about the change in these relations in detail, one thing is certain, namely, that the state has more and more taken possession of the individual and limited his personal freedom. This is evidently one of the accompanying facts of technics and the modern mass–state. It must be added that the development of medicine in the course of the last decades has led to discriminating formulations of questions which can no longer be solved by means of the laboratory and animal experiments.
The evidence has shown that not only in Germany and perhaps not even primarily in this country, the reorganization of the relationship between community and individual has resulted in
